Acquisition of hierarchical reactive skills in a unified cognitive architecture

In this paper, we review Icarus, a cognitive architecture that utilizes hierarchical skills and concepts for reactive execution in physical environments. In addition, we present two extensions to the framework. The first involves the incorporation of means-ends analysis, which lets the system compose known skills to solve novel problems. The second involves the storage of new skills that are based on successful means-ends traces. We report experimental studies of these mechanisms on three distinct domains. Our results suggest that the two methods interact to acquire useful skill hierarchies that generalize well and that reduce the effort required to handle new tasks. We conclude with a discussion of related work on learning and prospects for additional research, including extending the framework to cover developmental phenomena.     

Attachment and cognitive skills: An investigation of mediating mechanisms

Associations between maternal attachment patterns and cognitive skills at first grade were examined, and mediators of identified associations tested using Phase I and II data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Care and Youth Development, a prospective study of 1364 children and families from birth through sixth grade. There were three main findings. First, ambivalent and insecure/other attachment patterns were negative predictors of cognitive skills. Second, the association between ambivalent attachment and cognitive skills was mediated by children's behaviors related to testing. Third, the association between insecure/other attachment and cognitive skills was mediated by children's exploration, maternal instruction, children's social relationships, and children's behaviors related to testing. Implications for attachment theory and education are discussed.     

Exploring the perceived effectiveness of a life skills development program for high-performance athletes

The purpose of this study was to explore attitudes towards, experiences of, and perceived effectiveness of a life-skills programme for high-performance young athletes from multiple perspectives, including the athletes, coaches, parents, programme facilitators, and sport administrators. Six focus groups were conducted with 54 high-performance athletes from six sports: squash, softball, baseball, netball, triathlon, and surfing. Three focus groups were conducted with parents (n = 8) of athletes and a further eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with coaches (n = 4) and lead facilitators (n = 4) of the life-skills programme. Four semi-structured interviews were also held with representatives from State Sporting Associations (SSAs) from the sports involved. Thematic content analysis revealed seven main themes: achieving balance and managing stress, time management, goal setting, confidence and control, information overload and repetition, credible role-models, coach reinforcement and follow-up. The programme was perceived to be moderately successful in developing adaptive behaviours and motives including better engagement in training and in adopting time management and planning skills in contexts outside of sport such as homework and academic study. The programme also fostered the development of skills, attitudes, and motives important for sport success such as goal setting and having confidence to succeed. To improve the effectiveness of such programmes, more emphasis should be placed on the practice of, and engagement with, applied techniques to develop skills with less emphasis on information giving and theory. Facilitators of programmes should also be more pro-active in involving parents and coaches as a way to improve continuity and provide post-program reinforcement and support.     

When self-help is no help: Traditional cognitive skills training does not prevent depressive symptoms in people who ruminate

A randomized trial was conducted to test the efficacy of three self-directed prevention intervention workbooks for depression. Cognitively at-risk college freshmen were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: traditional cognitive, non-traditional cognitive, and academic skills. Consistent with hypotheses, participants who were high in rumination and experienced stress exhibited significantly greater levels of depressive symptoms after completing the traditional cognitive skills workbook than after completing the other two workbooks. This pattern of results held post-intervention and 4 months later. These findings indicate that rumination may hinder ones ability to identify and dispute negative thoughts (at least without the help of a trained professional). The results underscore the importance of identifying individual difference variables that moderate intervention efficacy. They also raise concerns about the potential benefits of self-help books, an industry that generates billions of dollars each year.     

Preliminary evidence for low openness to experience as a pre-clinical marker of incipient cognitive decline in older adults

The current study examined self-reported Openness to Experience as a marker of incipient cognitive decline among older adults. Seventy five cognitively-intact, community-dwelling adults ages 58–87 were assessed with the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R; (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale 2nd edition (DRS-2; (Mattis, Jurica, & Leitten, 1988) to examine association with incipient decline over approximately 1 year. Low Openness to Experience was associated with decline, controlling for baseline screening scores, age, education, and the other four personality factors. Examination of facet-level associations indicated that lower scores on the Values and Aesthetics facets of Openness primarily explained the association. Current findings build on prior research suggesting that exaggerated reaction to novelty may signal pre-clinical cognitive decline.     

Rich interpretation vs. deflationary accounts in cognitive development: the case of means-end skills in 7-month-old infants

Seven-month-old infants appear to learn means-end skills, such as pushing a button to retrieve a distant toy (Psychological Review 104 (1997) 686). The present studies tested whether such apparent means-end behaviors are genuine, or simply the repetition of trained behaviors under conditions of greatest arousal, as suggested by a dynamic systems reinterpretation. When infants were trained to repeat behaviors that did not serve as means to retrieving toys (pushing a button to light a set of distant lights), their button-pushing differed significantly from infants for whom button-pushing served as a means for retrieving toys. Further, infants demonstrated means-end skills with behaviors that they had not been trained to repeat. Implications for early means-end abilities and for debates surrounding the interpretation of infant behavior are discussed.     

Spanning seven orders of magnitude: a challenge for cognitive modeling

Much of cognitive psychology focuses on effects measured in tens of milliseconds while significant educational outcomes take tens of hours to achieve. The task of bridging this gap is analyzed in terms of Newell's (1990) bands of cognition—the Biological, Cognitive, Rational, and Social Bands. The 10 millisecond effects reside in his Biological Band while the significant learning outcomes reside in his Social Band. The paper assesses three theses: The Decomposition Thesis claims that learning occurring at the Social Band can be reduced to learning occurring at lower bands. The Relevance Thesis claims that instructional outcomes at the Social Band can be improved by paying attention to cognition at the lower bands. The Modeling Thesis claims that cognitive modeling provides a basis for bridging between events on the small scale and desired outcomes on the large scale. The unit‐task level, at the boundary of the Cognitive and Rational Bands, is useful for assessing these theses. There is good evidence for all three theses in efforts that bridge from the unit‐task level to educational applications. While there is evidence for the Decomposition Thesis all the way down to the 10 millisecond level, more work needs to be done to establish the Relevance Thesis and particularly the Modeling Thesis at the lower levels.     

The development of children’s early memory skills

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children’s Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied across the different ages. Language ability emerged as a predictor of immediate Elicited Imitation performance by 24 months of age and predicted delayed performance at each age. In addition to the contributions of language, children’s abilities to search for and retrieve toys in the deliberate memory task were associated with their immediate Elicited Imitation performance at each age. In addition to language, working memory was positively associated with aspects of both immediate and delayed performance at all ages. The extent to which it was possible to replicate and extend previous cross-sectional work in this longitudinal study is discussed.     

Rostro‐caudal and dorso‐ventral gradients in medial and lateral prefrontal cortex during cognitive control of affective and cognitive interference

Characterizing the anatomical substrates of major brain functions such as cognition and emotion is of utmost importance to the ongoing efforts of understanding the nature of psychiatric ailments and their potential treatment. The aim of our study was to investigate how the brain handles affective and cognitive interferences on cognitive processes. Functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation was performed on healthy individuals, comparing the brain oxygenation level dependent activation patterns during affective and cognitive counting Stroop tasks. The affective Stroop task activated rostral parts of medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and rostral and ventral parts of lateral PFC, while cognitive Stroop activated caudal parts of medial PFC and caudal and dorsal parts of lateral PFC. Our findings suggest that the brain may handle affective and cognitive interference on cognitive processes differentially, with affective interference preferentially activating rostral and ventral PFC networks and cognitive interference activating caudal and dorsal PFC networks.     

Losing control in front of a fearful face: The effect of emotional information on cognitive control

How is our cognitive control system modulated by emotional information, especially fearful stimuli? An intuitive hypothesis is that fearful stimuli would enhance cognitive control so that people could switch from the ongoing task to emergent events more quickly to secure themselves. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the influence of emotional information on the shift function of cognitive control by using the task-cueing procedure, in which face images were presented as cues. With the gender of faces indicating which task to do, we manipulated the emotional valence of faces (neutral vs. fearful), finding that the switch costs were larger in the trials containing fearful cues than in the trials containing neutral cues (Experiment 1). This effect was not caused by enlarging task-set interference (Experiment 2), nor by slowing down cue encoding (Experiment 3). Contrary to the intuitive hypothesis, our results suggested that the endogenous task-set reconfiguration process was impaired when fearful faces were presented. We speculated that the benefit of decreasing cognitive flexibility in face of fearful stimuli is to speed up response in a dangerous environment, and this accelerating response is achieved by suppressing the goal-directed system to permit the fast, automatic stimulus-driven system to govern behaviours.     

Examining the impact of salesperson interpersonal mentalizing skills on performance: the role of attachment anxiety and subjective happiness

Due to the dynamic and interpersonal nature of selling, understanding affective and cognitive relationships and their influence on performance has gained the attention of sales scholars. Moreover, recent literature has created opportunities to study the impact of cognitions, such as salesperson theory-of-mind, on sales performance. This research develops a model involving salesperson interpersonal mentalizing skills (i.e. rapport building, detecting nonverbal cues, taking a bird’s-eye view, shaping the interactions), subjective happiness, attachment anxiety, and sales performance. Although salesforce optimization is critical in any economy, emerging economies are the growth frontier for many global companies. Using three samples from Brazil, we investigate the telecom, banking, and retail industries, providing generalizable results from one such emerging economy. We find that, in general, it is the influence of attachment anxiety and subjective happiness on interpersonal mentalizing skills which ultimately impacts sales performance. Based on these findings, we discuss several theoretical and managerial implications.     

Behavioural adaptation and effectiveness of a Forward Collision Warning System depending on a secondary cognitive task

Forward Collision Warning Systems (FCWS) have been designed to enhance road safety by reducing the number of rear-end collisions. Nevertheless, little is known about how drivers adapt their behaviour over time when using this kind of system. In addition, these systems are expected to aid particularly distracted drivers. However, previous research has suggested that the effectiveness of the system could depend on the difficulty level of the secondary task. The objective of this study on driving simulator was twofold. Firstly, it consisted in evaluating the behavioural adaptation to an FCWS as well as analysing the possible consequences of driving without the system after a short period of adaptation. Secondly, it was to evaluate the effectiveness of the system according to two different difficulty levels of a cognitive secondary task. The results showed that drivers adapted their behaviour positively when the system was introduced. Nevertheless, both the effectiveness and the behavioural adaptation in the short term were dependent on the cognitive load induced by the secondary task. These findings suggest that the warning needs some attentional resources to be processed. Finally, no negative or transfer effect was observed following the removal of the system after a short period of adaptation.     

Attention and cognitive control networks assessed in a dichotic listening fMRI study

A meaningful interaction with our environment relies on the ability to focus on relevant sensory input and to ignore irrelevant information, i.e. top-down control and attention processes are employed to select from competing stimuli following internal goals. In this, the demands for the recruitment of top-down control processes depend on the relative perceptual salience of the competing stimuli. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the recruitment of top-down control processes in response to varying degrees of control demands in the auditory modality. For this purpose, we tested 20 male and 20 female subjects with a dichotic listening paradigm, in which the relative perceptual salience of two simultaneously presented stimuli was systematically manipulated by varying the inter-aural intensity difference (IID) and asking the subjects to selectively attend to either ear. The analysis showed that the interaction between IID and attentional direction involves two networks in the brain. A fronto-parietal network, including the pre-supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate cortex, inferior frontal junction, insula and inferior parietal lobe, was recruited during cognitively demanding conditions and can thus be seen as a top-down cognitive control network. In contrast, a second network including the superior temporal and the post-central gyri was engaged under conditions with low cognitive control demands. These findings demonstrate how cognitive control is achieved through the interplay of distinct brain networks, with their differential engagement determined as a function of the level of competition between the sensory stimuli.     

Assessment and validation of diagnostic interviewing skills for the mental health professions

A behavioral test was developed to assess the quality of diagnostic interviewing skills of (future) mental health professionals. Two aspects of diagnostic interviewing ability are distinguished: process skills, reflecting the interpersonal and communication skills; and content skills, referring to the information-gathering ability of the interviewer. It was found that diagnostic interviewing can be reliably measured with respect to interrater reliability. However, interviewer performance on one case proved to be a poor predictor of performance on other cases. It was concluded that a large number of cases is required to obtain reliable scores of general diagnostic interviewing ability. Validity was supported by the correlational analyses. Process skills were strongly related to patient satisfaction, whereas content skills were related to the amount of relevant information given by the patient and the accuracy of the diagnostic formulation and treatment plan.     

Strategic adaptation to performance objectives in a dual-task setting

How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks. But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries led to poor performance? We report a study in which participants manually dialed a UK‐style telephone number while driving a simulated vehicle. If the driver were to exclusively return his or her attention to driving after completing a subtask (i.e., using the single break in the xxxxx‐xxxxxx representational structure of the number), then we would expect to see a relatively poor driving performance. In contrast, our results show that drivers choose to return attention to steering control before the natural subtask boundary. A computational modeling analysis shows that drivers had to adopt this strategy to meet the required performance objective of maintaining an acceptable lateral position in the road while dialing. Taken together these results support the idea that people can strategically control the allocation of attention in multitask settings to meet specific performance criteria.     

Individual differences in religiosity as a function of cognitive ability and cognitive style

The current study examines the degree to which individual differences in cognitive ability and cognitive style (rational thinking vs. experiential thinking) uniquely and jointly account for differences in religiosity. Using an array of measures of religiosity, results show that cognitive ability has a medium to large negative effect on various aspects of religiosity. Though also negatively related to religiosity, rational thinking style did not add significant unique effects, nor did it convey a significant indirect effect from cognitive ability. Experiential thinking was generally unrelated to ability but was positively related to some aspects of religiosity. Overall the results confirm that those with higher cognitive ability are less likely to accept religious doctrine or engage in religious behaviors and those with lower ability are more likely to accept religious doctrine and exhibit higher levels of fundamentalism. Cognitive style appears to play a lesser role in explaining individual differences in religiosity than cognitive ability.     

The effects of attentional shift training on the execution of soccer skills: A preliminary investigation

One of the most important skills in soccer is the ability to respond quickly and accurately to the changing demands of the competitive environment (i.e., position of ball, teammates, opponents). A multiple baseline design across 4 male collegiate soccer players was used to determine the effectiveness of an attentional training program on the execution of targeted soccer skills. The treatment included information and laboratory attentional shift exercises followed by practice of attentional shifting skills on the execution of different soccer exercises. Following treatment, the accuracy of execution of the experimental soccer drill improved.     

Pre-stressor cognitive control is related to intrusive cognition of a stressful film

It has been suggested that relatively weak cognitive control existing prior to a stressful event may be associated with intrusive memories of that stressor afterwards. We explored this in two analog studies employing unselected participants who saw an emotional film fragment and completed behavioral (i.e., color-naming interference [CNI]) and self-report indices of intrusions. Prior to film presentation, several cognitive control tests were administered. Study 1 showed that better updating/monitoring was linked to less CNI from negative film-related words. However, better updating/monitoring was associated with more diary reports of intrusive memories. Study 2 showed that a better resistance to pro-active interference (PI) predicted less self-reported film-related intrusive cognition after 24h. However, after this delay, both self-reported intrusions and CNI were not related to updating/monitoring. Taken together, the results suggest that a specific pre-existing cognitive control function (i.e., resistance to PI) may be involved in the regulation of post-stressor intrusive memory phenomena.     

Behavioral coaching in the development of skills in football, gymnastics, and tennis

A review of the literature indicates that methods of skill acquisition based on the operant paradigm have been scientifically validated with many motor behaviors. However, these procedures have been limited to the use of positive reinforcement for correct performance when applied to the acquisition of complex sports skills in natural settings. To find complementary procedures to enhance skill acquisition, a coaching method involving several behavioral techniques was developed that focused on remediation of errors. This coaching method combined the following components: (1) systematic use of verbal instructions and feedback, (2) positive and negative reinforcement, (3) positive practice, and (4) time out. Three sports, football, gymnastics, and tennis, were selected to determine the effectiveness and generality of this behavioral coaching method. A total of 23 male and female subjects, ranging in age from 11 to 35, was included in this study. Baseline data were first collected for each sport under standard coaching conditions. Next, the behavioral coaching method was evaluated depending on the sport in either a multiple baseline or a reversal design. The behavioral dimensions selected were blocking in football; backward walkovers, front hand springs, and reverse kips in gymnastics; and the forehand, backhand, and serve in tennis. Behavioral coaching was immediately effective in increasing the correct execution of complex skills in all three sports. Gains of up to 10 times the baseline performance were achieved in each sport. In football, behavioral coaching resulted in an increase in correct blocking performance from a baseline average of 5% to 51.3%. Gymnasts' performances increased from baseline averages of 2.7% to 52.6% across the three skills. In tennis, standard coaching produced an average of 6% correct performance which increased dramatically under behavioral coaching to 57% across the three strokes. The success of the behavioral coaching package used here suggests that a technology of behavior may offer additional and complementary strategies to the acquisition of motor skills in the natural environment.